If you’ve ever battled with depression, you’ve likely been told you have a chemical imbalance and were subsequently prescribed an antidepressant drug.
A comprehensive study appearing in Psychology Today has given a decisive blow to the serotonin hypothesis. The study concludes that we were marketed a hypothesis that is a hundred percent wrong!
It was Joseph Schildkraut who introduced the chemical imbalance theory in 1965. Shortly thereafter, the pharmaceutical industry came out with serotonin inhibitors like Prozac and Zoloft which have turned into a multi-billion dollar industry.
Join Dr. Martin as he shares this study debunking the chemical imbalance theory!
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. And welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Now, the other day, we did a whole session on depression, right? But I gotta bring this to you because this is a huge, huge headline. It is a huge headline in depression. Now let me read you the headline and we'll talk about this for a few minutes. At least the headline is this a decisive blow to serotonin hypothesis. Now I'm gonna break that down for you. This was in psychology today. Comprehensive study on depression says there's been a marketing of a hypothesis that was a hundred percent wrong. According to studies.
Now I wanna give you a little bit of history in 1965. Doctor, see if I pronounce this right, Joseph Schitz crop. Schitz crop started the theory of chemical imbalance for depression. He started the theory on you got a chemical imbalance. That's why you're depressed. And thus shortly thereafter, the pharmaceutical industry came out with SSRIs, serotonin inhibitors like Prozac, and like Zoloft, multibillion dollars. Now I said this the other day, when it comes to depression, the treatment of it has been a colossal failure. Now look, you know, somebody asked me the other day after the program, doc, I wanna get off my SSRIs. I've been on 'em for a long time. Whatever. Look, I'm not your personal doctor. So I can't tell anyone to do that. All I'm bringing here is education. You read a story and psychology today like this, this was done on an exhaustive study on all the studies looking at is depression.
Really a chemical imbalance because SSRIs were made to fix a chemical imbalance if they did, why didn't it fix depression? That was the question asked. Now the other day we talked about this and I wanna go back in just a little bit, because I talked to you about my personal experience with depression. Let's do a little bit of a review here. What I was saying in my clinical experience that depression it's the chicken or the egg. I never said that it wasn't an imbalance, but it was more complex than that. I wasn't so worried about imbalance of serotonin, the feel good hormone, the mood changer. I was never so big on that. Like for me, I used to look at depression completely different. And what I did is I was big on deficiencies that the brain never acted alone. First of all, that the brain was very, very responsive to what your gut was doing. Now, I'm talking 50 years ago, talking about the connection between your gut and your brain, because one thing we knew even way back then is you had more feel good hormones in your gut than you had in your brain. You know what the Hippocratic oath is, first of all, do no harm. When you put your hand up and repeat the Hippocratic oath, I did that. You know what? The first part of it is, don't do any harm.
Don't do any harm. And I can tell you when it comes to depression and these studies are bearing it out, SSRIs have done a lot of harm, a lot of harm. They were looking for love in all the wrong places, because it wasn't at the root of depression. One guy said it, he started a theory. It's almost like the cholesterol hoax, which is a hundred percent hoax. The cholesterol hoax was started by one guy. You guys should know this. If I gave you a rapid test, who was the guy? What was his name? And so he started a hoax look. He probably meant well, it was a theory that he had after President Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955. He got a lot of ink, cuz he said, well, I know what caused President Eisenhower's heart attack. It was cholesterol that fatty looking substance.
Now look folks, if you're on a podcast, you won't see this, but do it in your mind's eye. See that yellow glob behind me here. On my right hand shoulder over my right. You see that? That's five pounds of fat. Okay. Well you see in Ansel keys mind that five pounds of fat looks like cholesterol. Cholesterol is a yellowish, looks like that. So he said, that's what's clogging up your arteries. Was he right? He was a hundred percent wrong. Wasn't cholesterol. Wasn't the boogeyman cholesterol. Wasn't the bad guy. But that theory, as you know, got well established and the pharmaceutical industry jumped all over it. The food industry jumped all over it. Two of the biggest, most powerful groups in the world, pharmaceutical food and the rest is history. My friend, even today, 90 something percent of the population. More than that, 95%, maybe more than not even still believe Cholesterol's the bad guy. When it comes to heart disease. Now, when it comes to depression, one guy, I can't even pronounce his name, had a theory. I know why you're depressed. You have a chemical imbalance here we are. I mean, 60 years later, that wasn't true.
It wasn't true. But there only seems to be one treatment for depression. And that is SSRIs. The problem is it didn't really work. And you know, watch a movie, think of everyday life, people that are emotional depressive. And they'll say, I think they got off their meds. See that's part of our worlds. Psyche. That's what happened with cholesterol. If you repeat it, repeat it, repeat a lie. And people buy it. The general population. Oh, it must be true. Right? You don't wanna get me going on climate change. Don't get me going. I won't talk about it. No, but seriously just say it. Say it, say it, say it, say it, and guess what happens? And we've had over 50 years of chemical imbalance theory in depression. Good luck trying to debunk that. Even though when they looked at all the research that's ever been done on chemical imbalance, being at the root of depression, they're saying, uh, it don't add up.
It's not true. We can't substantiate the research. The treatment has been a colossal failure and I'm quoting them. I'm quoting them. And what I said the other day, my experience with clinical depression was I looked at history, number one and deficiencies number two, two things that stood up. One, the microbiome changed and usually because of antibiotics and actually there's a story out on antibiotics that came out yesterday or the day before I gotta tell you about it, but I'm not promising. I'm gonna get to it today. It's another fascinating story. How the psyche of doctors, you can't change their mind. It's hard to introduce something new to them. Now, when you look at the brain, you better look at the gut. And I talked to you the other day about the blood gut barrier, the gut blood barrier, having the connection to the blood brain barrier. When toxins come across, when they get into your bloodstream, they travel to the brain. Two ways through the blood and through the cranial nerve, the 10th cranial nerve. There's a huge connection between the gut and the brain hypo said it 2000 years ago, when he said all disease starts in the gut. Depression is not a chemical imbalance.
It's not, it's not the cause the toxic brain I'm doubling down on this antibiotics. The greatest discovery of the 20th century has become the curse of the 21st, cuz it wipes out your bacteria. And if you look at things short term, you gotta bug. You got a bacteria. Unfortunately, antibiotics are given out. Even for viruses. They should never be given out for that. Anyway, we'll get into that at another time. Now take an antibiotic. You're a child. It wipes out your protection between your blood and your gut and then your blood brain barrier toxins enter into the bloodstream. They get into your brain. They create an inflammatory response. And if you're the Canary in the coal mine, that can start out on the path of depression.
It messes up hormones, crazy. Isn't it, bad food, sugar, unhealthy oils, bad oil, bad oil creates inflammation, sugar feeds yeast. And you start a process. And for some people that can be at the root of their depression, my friend, bad food, bad medication. I know antibiotics can save your life and that's when they should be used. Absolutely. I got no problem with that. But for heaven's sakes, let's regenerate our microbiome. Get rid of sugar, get rid of those crappy carbs. Huge, huge effect on the brain. Huge effect, bad oil, almost invariably, folks have low vitamin D depression, low vitamin D almost invariably. And the other thing that I saw low omega three, the good oil, omega six too much, omega three DHA, EPA, animal fat with good oil.
The Inuit don't get depression. One thing they don't get is heart disease. They get their vitamin D from food. You see, they don't see the sun. They're not sun bathing, but they do get vitamin D. They get omega three high levels. They keep their inflammation down. What's the other one I talked to you about all the time. What was low in people, low B12 folks out of all your B vitamins. B12 is the brain. One. B12 is neurological. B12 is found in the animal kingdom in red meat, not even found in chicken. And we talked about that the other day and my opinion, just to come back to that leaky gut for a minute, the gut and the brain, huge, huge implications. When you have an overgrowth of yeast now, neurologically, we know what happens, Ms. Parkinson's cause even to get heavy metals across the brain, it's transported by yeast, fungus.
So when you eat sugar, you're feeding the bears and yeast is a huge, huge microtoxin. You can't see it. It creates a terrible inflammatory response in the body and the brain pays the price for it. And this is why my approach to depression was clean up the diet and had to start with that. Fix the gut. Okay? So clean up the diet, fix the gut, fix that microbiome. If you fix your gut, you're fixing your blood brain barrier too, you get two for the price of one guys, you have to admit something. I've never changed my tune. It won't let me sing, but I've never changed my tune. I've always, always, always talked to you about probiotics, good bacteria. You need to replace that. And we had a paradigm shift 15 years ago, maybe at the Martin clinic, Tony junior and I, we went from union probiotics two or three times a year, need to take probiotics to, because of all the new things that were coming out, we said, no, you need probiotics every day.
It's a foundational supplement. So for me, my treatment, and as I was saying the other day, the problem with treatment, okay, is whether they're going to conform, whether they're going to implement the changes. Now here's the problem. Of course, you can understand this. If a person is depressed, they don't feel like doing anything. That's why medication it's easy for them. Take my meds, take my meds. They can do it. People around them. Take your meds. Look again, guys. I had a plan. It was excellent. I've seen people over the years, unreal the changes. And I mean it, but they had to do it. And I used to try and get them seriously in a short period of time to understand why I was recommending what I was recommending. And you know, some of it they got because I could show them the results of their testing.
Well, you know what? The cortisol was high. They had leaky gut leaky brain. They had low levels of B12. They had low levels of vitamin D. They had low levels of omega three. I said, well, you gotta fix that. Change your diet, fix your gut and get your deficiencies. B12, vitamin D omega three, fix that I talked to you about even an electro, like magnesium. Oftentimes they were low and none guys I'm telling you the results were astounding. And for people who have been in my field, when they look at deficiencies and they fix those, change the diet. See, I'm a big guy on changing fuel. Change your fuel, change your oil, change your fuel. Change your oil. Every day I get asked, Dr. Why are you so fixated on eggs, meat, and cheese. You know what? Eggs are a super multivitamin and mineral and meat, especially red is a super nutrient from your brain to your toes.
The good dairy fat. You know why dairy is the good fat. That's why you don't drink milk. Good in don't drink milk. You don't need to, don't drink fat free. That's not nature. Fat and protein. That's dairy fat soluble vitamins, vitamin a vitamin D vitamin K2. Guys. You need that. These are super multi vitamins, protein, fat. When you eat protein and you eat fat together in nature, that's the way God's given it to us. Protein fat put 'em together. What do you have? Eggs, meat, cheese. Don't get rid of dairy. Who told you that? Oh, Dr. Martin. Me, me, me, me, me. I hear it every day. Dairy bad. Dairy's not bad. Dairy's not bad. The grocery store milk is bad because it's not milk. Didn't come out of the cow like that. This is how your brain operates. You need to change fuel and you need to change oil.
Why do you think we see so much depression today? And I know, look, you look at what especially young people have gone through and seniors have gone through and we need each other. Look, I've talked to you enough about lockdowns and stuff like that. Over a period of time, the unintended consequences of all that look at our young people have gone through miserable. They've lost years on their lives, and no one was talking about their immune system. But let me tell you this. When it comes to depression, you fix food, you fix the gut and you supplement those deficiencies. And my friend I'll tell you something. I would put that protocol up against any other protocol.
Now, like I said, the problem is our society, man. It's gonna be a hard time for them to change their mind. It's gonna be a hard thing because I was reading something and Dr. McEwen, I often reference her because she teaches psychology at the University of Tennessee. Now, listen, I think she would confirm this statistic like students, psychology students are taught. Now, when you got depression, mental health issues, there's a chemical imbalance. That's what they're taught. And I love Dr. McEwen, cuz she thinks outside the box like me. Okay. And my protocol was based on that based on history. And I talked to you the other day about trauma, even in childhood or later on antibiotics, trauma, family dynamic. Sure. Cuz like I said, I was a history guy. I wanted your personal history. Tell me about your history. Did you ever go through a period of enormous amount of stress? Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Yep. When I used to ask that question, there's almost a time that that was a part of the equation, gut food, change their diet, change the oil and supplementation for deficiencies.
Look for deficiencies and get those fixed. And there are people looking at this stuff for sure. But will it ever become mainstream? Uh, I'm not that confident when you've got the world thinking this is a chemical imbalance. It's not gonna be easy to change. Won't be easy. But again, I'm into education. If doctors will listen to me, I'll try and show them what I know. But generally, I'm aiming at you, you and your family and your friends. I had a radio show for many years. I tried to influence people on it. Just educate them to look at the world, maybe a little differently. Especially the world of nutrition. There was so much nonsense and lies out there. I spent my life trying to change people. And now on this venue, through the podcast and the Facebook lives, this is what I do. I enjoy it thoroughly.
And I thank you for the feedback guys. I mean that, you know, the feedback has been very, very positive. Yeah. There's the naysayers and that's all right. I mean it, you know, when we have an audience, like we have something like 60,000 people a week tuning in, happy about that. Okay guys. So that was sort of part two of depression. Isn't that interesting? You know, reading that headline, like it just about shock me. Let me read it to you again, just as a headline, a decisive blow to serotonin hypothesis. It debunks the chemical imbalance theory. Wow. Part of the article, a multibillion dollar error, a marketing myth. All of that in psychology today. Incredible. Okay guys, we love you dearly and we'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another doctor's end podcast with your hosts, Dr. Martin junior and senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening.